Loren stood straighter, prouder, on the bench of the carriage. She felt a sense of righteousness well up deep in her chest. She knew that what she was doing was what was needed. Her plan was right and just. Those who dared lay a hand on her family, to dare challenge the might of Aldoran, would be swiftly found and put to the sword. This being summoned back to her home was merely a setback, a diversion. She would so easily escape the castle and the city, and return to her quest. Why should she be stopped? Her purpose was true and noble. She was unstoppable.
Loren’s eyes shone gold in the sunlight as the carriage rode through the gates of the castle.
The carriage finally stopped, and two of the guards that rode by the carriage opened it and helped Loren out. They bowed to the princess and moved away to return to the barracks and have a well-earned rest. The king himself went to retrieve his daughter, but he took one look at her and turned to his men.
“Get the Spellmaster! Immediately!” he roared. A servant jumped, startled by the urgency in the king’s voice, and ran into the castle. King Jorrne grabbed Loren by the arm and hurried her inside. She opened her mouth to protest, but the king would not hear a word of it.
The King’s grip on Loren’s arm was relentless. In the back of her mind, she felt that her father’s grip was bruising her skin. It was painful as the king roughly guided her down the hall, pulling and yanking on her upper arm as he did. But she knew that, while there was anger there, the king was acting out of worry and urgency. But another part of her mind screamed with protest and pride. How dare he manhandle her like this? Her? She was the daughter of dragons, and so was far above this. Tentatively, she tried to pull her arm back. King Jorrne only yanked her along harder.
King Jorrne all but kicked open the door to his wife’s chambers. A female attendant that was sitting on a stool by the queen’s bedside snapped to attention, startled by the sudden noise. She rose in anger and insult, expecting the intruder to be an uppity servant boy, but she quickly gulped and sat back down, meek and embarrassed, when she saw that it was the king of Aldoran and her daughter.
Queen Katarina was hidden behind the heavy curtains of a four-poster bed. Her private chambers weren’t used nearly as much after her marriage to the king and her moving to the shared royal chambers, and so were still decorated with the trappings and treasures from her youth. Mounted elk skulls grinned eerily from the lacquered wooden diamonds that they rested upon. The pelt of a large wild bear was laid out on the floor, its mouth propped open in a permanent snarl. The queen was an expert archer, and various old bows were hung on the wall, along with the quiver that she had paired with them in use. There were small recurve bows, carved and notched by the unsteady hands of a young girl, and larger bows with tighter strings that have seen heavy use in the queen’s adult years. Queen Katarina was not a trapper at least, and didn’t leave any traps scattered about the room to ensnare servants in her rebellious days. She preferred to stalk her quarries and stand motionless in the woods to listen for even the tiniest of noises. Kae reminded Loren of her mother, and of the stories Queen Katarina would tell of her hunts. Perhaps that was why the princess felt so at ease with the strange huntress and her wolf.
When King Jorrne saw the drawn curtains over the queen’s bed, he fell silent. He let go of Loren’s arm, and looked as if all the fight had gone out of him. A servant closed the door behind them as silently as he could, and the king took his first tentative steps towards the queen’s bed.
“Is she?” he asked the attendant softly. To his immense relief, the attendant shook her head. She leaned towards the heavy curtain and spoke softly through the fabric. The curtain began to shift slightly, belying movement behind it.
Queen Katarina pulled the curtain back. “Jorrne?” she asked with a voice as thin as paper. The queen was deathly pale, her skin translucent enough to see the purple veins underneath, racing across her skin. She had sat up in her bed and moved back the curtain with some difficulty, but while her body was weak, her mind wasn’t. Her gaze on the king was like knives. “What happened?”
“I found our daughter.” The king said, gesturing at Loren to approach the bed. He smiled and sad by the side of Katarina’s bed, still clad in his armor and riding boots. The queen made an impatient noise and lightly pushed at Jorrne’s knee; a sign for him to remove his dusty legs from her clean linens. “She was hiding in an inn in Rhodia with a couple of vagrants.”
“They weren’t vagrants!” Loren said in protest. As she stepped closer to her mother, the gold in her eyes were more apparent in the light. “They are my friends, and father left them in Rhodia. Humans, in the Beastman city! While it’s under Doreos’s rule, and humans are unwelcome! Father, you really should have taken them with us!”
Instead of losing his patience at the princess’s hotheaded words, the king looked to his wife with a helpless, pleading expression. Katarina saw his face in the corner of her vision, as she was more focused on Loren. She gazed into Loren’s unnaturally golden
